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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27208423">Whistle in the irredeemable night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretSegolene/pseuds/Segol%C3%A8ne'>Segolène (SecretSegolene)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>CLAMP - Works, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Final tag would be a spoiler c:, Not exactly TRC, Tokyo Revelations, Twin vampires Subaru &amp; Kamui, Vampire hunter Seishirou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:41:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,122</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27208423</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretSegolene/pseuds/Segol%C3%A8ne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>CLAMP's universe is generous and abundant. In the ruins of former Tokyo, centuries have nurtured unnamed kinds of life. Between the children of shattered diaspora and the dregs of humanity, there is a furtive game of shadows with hunters and the hunted. Steel fangs and silver claws, violet, green and amber circle their reflections in the night.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Whistle in the irredeemable night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just an opening for now. I wrote the middle first, and now I have to decide how it properly begins.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Under a crescent moon, shadows spun and wavered.</p>
<p>The scythe's blade was silvered steel, and shimmered in motion. It cut leaves like air, and branches like caramel pudding. </p>
<p>Drops of sweat mingled with drops of rain and pooled in hollows of the soft earth. Footprints. They ran down the long oak handle and soaked the folded cuffs of the hunter's coatsleeves.</p>
<p>His prey was nowhere to be seen. Above, straight skeletal branches seemed to brace the high canopy. The hunter's hard boots left light prints on the malleable soil, rain-soaked and fertile with autumn's leaf-fall. </p>
<p>The hunter had made a mistake, following his target into a thicket, where the nightstalker had the advantage of movement, vision and camouflage. His long bladed weapon was ineffective in a place like this, and the silver-coated steel was no use if it couldn't cut. The hunter thought he would be unsurprised if this error made in a moment of greed should prove to be fatal. </p>
<p>The hunter was dressed in dark browns and heavily waxed leather. He had no name, since he had been born without one. He had seen his own face in a crumbling library once, and taken the name of the man from the yellowed page. It wasn't his, but the secret of its origin amused him. Since it wasn't his name, he gave it freely to customs officers, innkeepers and women whose fleeting infatuation he happened to return. </p>
<p>Should he chase, or should he flee? Which should he choose? Which would his pride allow?</p>
<p>A gunshot startled a nightjar from the nearest pine. </p>
<p>The abrupt absence of song sharpened the simultaneous sound of rushed wingbeats and the rustle of upset leaves far overhead.</p>
<p>The hunter chose. Silently, he ran deeper into the trees until thicket became forest and moonlight finally streamed through the overhanging verdure. Dark green was painted with streaks of silver like a trail of slime shakily climbing a dandelion stem. Eyes of midnight blue peeped between tufts of leaves.</p>
<p>He swung his scythe experimentally. There was space to make a full circle around him. His left hand touched the leather case at his belt. A short handgun, should he need it, with four brass bullets and two silver.</p>
<p>But the gunshot had not been from his firearm. </p>
<p>A disagreement between brigands? Then why such silence? </p>
<p>A frightened traveller, startled by moving shadows? Perhaps by a pale face like a winter moon, by its black claws and lurid smile.</p>
<p>But whatever the mundane and unlikely causes for a weapon to be fired in the depths of a forest, in the depths of the night, the nauseating weight of one outclassed all others.</p>
<p>Someone else was hunting his prey.</p>
<p>Never, the hunter thought, impossible. And he increased his pace.</p>
<p>His feet trod lightly even as they skipped and flew over root and moss. His narrowed amber eyes scanned the surrounding darkness for a trace of motion that wasn't his own. He hoped to see the shredded corpse of a traveller lost in the night and poorly armed against the creature that panicked him. He prepared to confront another hunter, and impress upon the fellow in no uncertain terms that they had followed the wrong trail for their bounty.</p>
<p>He excised all thoughts of the haemophagic beast whose tail he had chased for a year. Let it appear. Let it not. The hunter sought an answer to his unease. He was no stranger to ambush.</p>
<p>The hunter thought: I am running towards a corpse or an enemy. </p>
<p>The hunter thought: Let it be an enemy, so that I have not come for nothing.</p>
<p>The faint wind carried a metallic scent. The hunter's human pupils were suited to darkness. His vision was exceptional among his peers. Soft steps kept their pace beside the heady trail of blood that steadily soaked the forest floor. </p>
<p>In the clearing, the slender figure of a young man crouched over another. One knee hovered close to the ground. He wore a finely sewn silk jacket with silver embroidery over the chest and around the cuffs of the upturned sleeves. His undershirt was pure white. Lace decorated his neck and collar, and ruffles of it spilled over the low button that held the jacket close.</p>
<p>Lying on the ground beneath the half-crouched, half-kneeling figure was a different man. Visibly older, tattily dressed, he might have been a merchant if not for the burning light in his eyes, shifting chaotically between madness, pain and murder. It was one the hunter recognised well. Many such men entered the same profession as he had, and many of them did not last long.</p>
<p>His head tipped back unnaturally so that his neck and spine were arched away from the forest floor, the prone man caught sight of the hunter straight away. The madly roving eyes locked for a moment with a cool amber gaze.</p>
<p>And then he began to crawl.</p>
<p>Crown half-dragging, half-scraping on the earth, the man crawled backwards on torn elbows and bloody heels. Black soil caked his wrists and nails. His open mouth was stuffed with more soil and thick blood trickled from both ears. </p>
<p>The figure above him held a posture of patient curiosity, as if observing a small animal.</p>
<p>Black hair, fine and straight, cut above the shoulder. A fringe shielded most of the face from view. The tips of the slender fingers ended in what might have been mistaken for eccentrically long fingernails. They were hard, black and viciously sharp. Both hunters easily recognised the claws of an old, very old, vampire. </p>
<p>"What are you doing?"</p>
<p>The vampire didn't answer. Just leaned forward to follow the dying man as he continued to grapple the earth in the newcome*r's direction.</p>
<p>The hunter that wasn't dying lowered his scythe and raised his gun. Four brass, two silver. </p>
<p>"Answer me."</p>
<p>The vampire pressed a claw into the hollow of the other man's throat, at which the helpless victim spluttered as much as a gagged man could, and attempted to crawl even faster. </p>
<p>The vampire raised its face. Amber eyes met violet.</p>
<p>"You're..." </p>
<p>"I'm...?" The face watching coldly from the centre of the clearing was not the one he had expected to see.</p>
<p>"You're not him."</p>
<p>The violet-eyed vampire, without breaking its gaze, stabbed hard with the claw at the gagging man's throat. It stabbed harder, ignoring the spurts of hot liquid that would leave stains in his shirt sleeves. It finally withdrew the long, black claw once the wretched writhing of the body on the ground had ceased, and what was once an unfortunate man was nothing more than a corpse.</p>
<p>"If you mean Subaru," the violet-eyed vampire said, his voice impassive and eerily feminine. "No. No, I'm not."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading. :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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